May 19, 2016: LinkedIn offers enormous potential for business people to gain qualified leads and generally extend their reach and influence. But LinkedIn – compared to social networks like Facebook and Twitter – is a complicated environment and both its “rules of engagement” and other requirements are demanding enough to cause many business people to make blunders. Here are some of the common LinkedIn mistakes:
1. Failure to optimize your LinkedIn profile
Your profile is key to being noticed and appreciated on LinkedIn. It’s where other professionals — including prospects and customers — will discover what you and the firm you represent are all about.
Think carefully about what goes here, how you’ve categorized yourself and/or your business, and about the “keywords” you’ve associated with your presence. People use the Search feature on LinkedIn to find each other, using the same kind of keyword-centric search techniques used on Google and the other search engines. Make sure your page can be found in these searches. For example, make sure to include keywords related to your specific industry. If you need help, Didit has a free eBook, The Ultimate Guide to Marketing on LinkedIn, that can make optimizing your profile an easy process.
2. Coming off like a fake
For years, LinkedIn has been waging a war against spammers and offshore identity thieves who’ve attempted to infiltrate the service with bogus profiles that appear to be bona fide. LinkedIn has admitted to the SEC that “we do not have a reliable system for identifying and counting duplicate or fraudulent accounts, or deceased, incapacitated or other non-members and so we rely on estimates and assumptions, which may not be accurate.” Consequently, as a business person, your first job is to demonstrate that you’re real, your connections are real, and so is the company employing you.
As a first step toward demonstrating your bona fides, it’s critical that you avoid the temptation to use LinkedIn’s “pre-fab” language when making any connection request or other communication. Instead, personalize your message in a meaningful, human way. If you do, the odds that your connection request will be accepted will markedly improve.
The same applies to the language you use on your profile. Avoid jargon, clichés, or clinical language. Write like a human being – not an anonymous scribe in a corporate HR department.
3. Unflattering or absent photos
First impressions are important, and LinkedIn photo icons are critically important visual indicators of professional identities. They are also the most noticeable, concentrated bunch of pixels on any LinkedIn page. Unfortunately, it seems that many business people put little thought into their selection. Too often the result is a photo that looks amateurish, pretentious, or just plain ridiculous – or no photo at all. To avoid uploading a cringe-worthy LinkedIn photo, read our guide: The Beginner’s Guide to iPhoneongraphy.
4. Posting too many “motivational” or inward-looking promotional posts
Once in a while, it’s acceptable to post a happy, positive-thinking, motivational status update. But if you post too many of them, you’re going to come off as sanctimonious, shallow, unimaginative, and lame.
The same holds for promotional (“here’s a pic of our gorgeous new supply room”) posts. The exception is event-related (“we’re going to be at the XYZ trade show this week”) posts. Because the latter relates to a real-world event likely to be interesting to people beyond your company, it won’t be perceived as blatant self-promotion.
Share content that can save people time or contribute to solving a business problem. Even if you or your firm didn’t generate this content, if it’s helpful, pass it on. Sharing content from third-party sources you personally curate is a good way to underscore the fact that you’re staying on top of the trends in your industry and your mind is open to many points of view.
5. Failure to post regularly and engage
LinkedIn is an “action-oriented” social network, so it’s mandatory to make frequent updates. For instance, any news, tips, projects that you may have completed, or new products you’re selling can demonstrate activity. Don’t slack — the moment you do is the moment visitors will begin to question your seriousness, and that’s something you want to avoid. But also don’t spam – posting multiple updates each day is likely wasted effort that runs the risk of seeming pushy and aggressive by LinkedIn’s buttoned-down audience.
The tone of your posts is important on LinkedIn, and you’ll have to walk a fine line between stuffiness and false levity. Fight the temptation to respond in a snarky way to posts that you find personally annoying (for example, motivational/promotional posts). It’s generally better to say nothing than to say something that someone will find nasty – even if that wasn’t your intent.
The same goes for any long-form posts you publish to LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform (now called Pulse). If you have something edgy, funny, or provocative to say, say it on some other network – not LinkedIn: it just won’t resonate.
6. Not participating in LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn’s “Groups” provide marketers with a powerful opportunity to participate and engage with LinkedIn members that bypasses some of the service’s normal restrictions against contacting someone you don’t know well. Groups also provide many other benefits, including letting business leaders distinguish themselves by sharing intelligence, answering questions from peers, and commenting on important industry discussions. If you’re not participating in Groups, you’re missing out on one of the most useful, business-friendly features of LinkedIn. If you find the prospect daunting, Didit’s free eBook, Using LinkedIn Groups to Attract B2B Leads, will set you on the right path.
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